Hal D. Lingerfelt is no stranger at the North Carolina Banking Commission.
The native of Vale, N.C., who was sworn in as head of the agency a little over a year ago, has been with the department all of his working life - 28 years.
Though clearly a familiar face in North Carolina banking, Mr. Lingerfelt, 50, represents a new style of state bank commissioner: a career examiner promoted from the ranks, rather than an outsider with political ties to the governor.
In fact, Mr. Lingerfelt hadn't even met James G. Hunt, North Carolina's governor, prior to the confirmation process last year.
Such appointments are becoming more common at bank commissions today as an industry growing in complexity demands watchdogs with an intimate knowledge of its many facets.
"The governor has only asked one thing of me - that I look out only for the public's interests," he said, seated in his office on a recent muggy day in Raleigh.
Mr. Lingerfelt said he is also trying to make the lives of bankers easier by using technology to cut the time examiners must spend at the state's banks.
Most observers agree that as recently as five years ago, there were few former examiners or former deputy commissioners serving as bank commissioners.
Except in Florida, where the office is elective, the post of top banking regulator is a political appointment, usually made by the governor. As a result, the posts have often been filled with political cronies, few of them fluent in the intricacies of bank applications.
Mr. Lingerfelt is one of 13 state banking regulators who had been career examiners. Another 10 were promoted from the deputy commissioner rank or from some other capacity within their agency, according to the Conference of State Bank Supervisors.
"There's definitely a trend toward more professionalism in state supervision," said Robert A. Richard, the conference's acting chief executive. "I think it shows that the industry is getting more complex and the issues more diverse, and it takes people who have a breadth of understanding of these various issues."
Mr. Lingerfelt said his years in the trenches have given him the understanding to profoundly transform bank supervision in North Carolina, and perhaps to influence the process in other states as well.
His tool: technology.
As chairman of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors' technology council since its inception 11 years ago, Mr. Lingerfelt understands the potential of technology to streamline the regulatory process.
He said the on-site examination time for a typical $150 million-asset community bank - now two to three weeks - could be reduced by at least 20% to 30%. He said this could be accomplished in part by requiring more electronic regulatory filings, thus making it easier for examiners to do more of their work in their own offices rather than in those of bank chief executives.
"The technology that is available and that we can take advantage of in the next five years is incredible," he said.
To foster more historical analysis of banking trends, he has opened a field office on the Charlotte campus of the University of North Carolina. Information on such things as growth patterns and changes in capital levels will be compiled on computers and made available to department employees, he said.
This sort of information can be useful, Mr. Lingerfelt maintained, given how quickly the industry is changing. When he first started at the commission in 1968, for example, there were 99 state banks with a total of $4.3 billion of assets. Today, the number of state-chartered banks has been more than halved to 48, but the remaining institutions now control $45 billion of assets.
The largest, Branch Banking and Trust, has $16 billion; Catawba Valley Bank, the smallest, has just $12 million. Most range from $100 million to $500 million of assets.
And with interstate branching just a year away, requiring unprecedented cooperation between not only state supervisors but between state and federal regulators, such data will become even more important, he said.
By his own admission, Mr. Lingerfelt is a private, low-profile person, more comfortable delving into the minutiae of a balance sheet than giving a speech before his state banking constituency.
In fact, he had turned down offers to become deputy commissioner three times before finally accepting in 1979.
Another reason for his reluctance: He preferred the job security of a bank examiner. The deputy's post is filled by the commissioner, and thus subject to shifting political winds. Mr. Lingerfelt prefers predictability, like adding up numbers on a bank ledger.
"Being commissioner was never on my A, B, C, D, or E list," he said. "I didn't want to go into a position where I could be dismissed without cause. But I feel more comfortable with it now and feel I can make a difference at this point in my career."
